emotional design Articles & Videos

  • The Authority Principle

    A perceived high-authority status of the person making a request can make people more compliant with that request. Applying this principle in UX can ease users' decision-making process.

  • First Impressions Matter: How Designers Can Support Humans’ Automatic Cognitive Processing

    The first visceral reaction to a site’s design influences how users perceive relevance, credibility, and even usability.

  • The Most Hated Online Advertising Techniques

    Modal ads, ads that reorganize content, and autoplaying video ads were among the most disliked. Ads that are annoying on desktop become intolerable on mobile.

  • Stop Shaming Your Users for Micro Conversions

    Manipulinks make users feel bad about themselves in order to convince them to accept an offer or sign up for a newsletter.

  • A Theory of User Delight: Why Usability Is the Foundation for Delightful Experiences

    UI embellishments can only produce surface delight; deep delight can only be achieved in functional, reliable, and usable interfaces.

  • Beyond Usability: 3 User Experiences Reshaping Their Industries

    Rent the Runway, Uber, and Airbnb challenge the traditional experiences of their industries through deep design, not just screen-UI design.

  • UX Stories Communicate Designs

    Help internal audiences empathize with users and buy into your design goals with well-crafted stories that build insight and focus on users and their needs.

  • Prospect Theory and Loss Aversion: How Users Make Decisions

    When choosing among several alternatives, people avoid losses and optimize for sure wins because the pain of losing is greater than the satisfaction of an equivalent gain. UX designs should frame decisions accordingly.

  • Perceived Value in User Interfaces

    The perceived value of a site represents the benefit that users expect to derive from using it. High expectations make users more likely to engage with the site.

  • Games User Research: What’s Different?

    Game testing researches the notion of fun. Compared with mainstream UX studies, it involves many more users and relies more on biometrics and custom software. The most striking findings from the Games User Research Summit were the drastic age and gender differences in motivation research.

  • Emotional Design Fail: I'm Divorcing My Nest Thermostat

    In an emotional-design fail, the Nest thermostat let me down: behaviorally, reflectively, and finally viscerally.

  • The Halo Effect

    The "halo effect" is when one trait of a person or thing is used to make an overall judgment of that person or thing. It supports rapid decisions, even if biased ones.

  • User Empowerment and the Fun Factor

    Designs that engage and empower users increase their enjoyment and encourage them to explore websites in-depth. Once we achieve ease of use, we'll need additional usability methods to further strengthen joy of use.

  • Seductive User Interfaces

    Because computers are no longer used exclusively for utilitarian tasks, we should use systematic methods to design products that are not just efficient but also attractive to users.